1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to toy dolls and activity playsets, and in particular concerns a combination doll and activity playset.
2. Prior Art
The toy market includes various dolls, with associated wardrobes styled around certain themes. Typical dolls have idealized physical proportions that resemble at most only a fraction of actual people. Play activities available with the dolls, to the extent they are available, revolve to a large extent around wardrobe choices. In order to provide a variety of thematic play activity choices, a doll playset might include a collection of choices that have doubtful logical association. For example, a policewoman doll's wardrobe might include a formal ball gown and a one-piece bathing suit. Such play choices are expected to provide a fertile ground for imagination with respect to various potential career choices and the like.
The idealized physical proportions and flawlessness of known dolls are unreal. The typical designer of a mature form of doll strives to represent, for example, the most popular girl in school, such as the high school prom queen, or the most attractive, e.g., a Miss America type. These dolls typically have a tiny waist and a full bust, a straight and narrow nose with a pleasing point, disproportionately small feet and hands, and disproportionately large eyes and eyelashes.
Most of the children who use such dolls cannot expect to develop a body with proportions resembling those of the dolls. Thus the dolls give children unreal expectations about how their bodies will or should develop. The dolls contribute to a lack of self-esteem that unfortunately is bolstered by advertising and television programming wherein depicted role models typically represent "the perfect woman" insofar as possible. Beginning at critical pubescent years, young girls can become unreasonably disillusioned because the ideal body that they have been taught to value or to hope for, fails to materialize.
Conventional dolls and their associated action wardrobe selections subordinate meaningful educational activities to physical attractiveness. These dolls send a wrong message to their youthful users. It would be advantageous if a combination doll and activity playset could be developed that does not emphasize idealized physical good looks, instead providing meaningful educational opportunities that go to activity aspects, as opposed to a rigid conformity of physical aspects of the doll's appearance with unrealistic ideals.